9 October 1943
Stuttgart sunk
30 January 1945
Wilhelm Gustloff sunk
10 February 1945
Steuben sunk
8 April 1945
Franken sunk
16 April 1945
Goya sunk
17 July – 2 August 1945
‘Big Three’ Potsdam Conference. One of the decisions made was that the Third Reich’s arsenal had to be neutralized. As a result, some of the conventional and chemical weapons gathered by Nazi Germany were placed at the bottom of the Baltic Sea.
July 1955
A container holding mustard gas washed up on the beach in Darłówko. Children playing on the beach were burnt, and some of them lost their sight.
1974
The Helsinki Commission is set up. One of the decisions made by the Organization, made up of Baltic Countries and the European Union, is to take action to remove hazardous remnants of materials from World War II from the seabed.
1997
Fisherman find a container holding mustard gas 30 nautical miles north of Władysławowo, and are severely burnt. There have been several cases of this over the years.
1999
Fuel begins to leak from the Stuttgart. More than 40 ha of the Bay of Puck seabed becomes a ‘death zone’ in which there is no life.
2011
The international project CHEMSEA begins. The aim of the initiative was to perform tests to determine where chemical weapons were sunk in the Baltic Sea and to map the hazards.
2012
Two women on the island of Uznam confuse flammable phosphorus with amber. They are taken to hospital for burns.
27 April 2021
The European Parliament adopts a resolution to eliminate chemical weapons from the Baltic seabed.
The future
What happens in the coming years depends on us all, and so it is worth signing the Petition calling upon the EU to eliminate chemical weapons from the Baltic seabed. We need to save the Baltic for future generations!